The Girls' Almanac

by Emily Franklin

  As he was explaining this, Heather thought maybe she would meet someone if she went to pay respects to Kyla. Kyla had mentioned in passing that she knew lots of nice available men, but Heather hadn’t let herself be fixed up. One time Heather was asked out by a jury member after the trial ended and he’d kissed her right in front of the cement horse and soldier statue in the park, but then she didn’t hear from him again. Then, as Kyla’s supposed brother was talking, he started crying, and Heather felt ashamed for thinking his mother’s death place could be her romantic redemption. When she blushed she felt even worse, because the brother quickly wiped his tears and said he was sorry for taking up her time.

  Now that it’s the second night of Shiva, Heather is getting used to the sounds from upstairs. The constant shuffle gives her a reprieve from her hollow house, the loneliness that gnaws at her until she is moth-eaten, pocked. Mourners are eating and feeling sad up there, and she’s somehow recording it just like she’s listening, almost wanting to press her ear to the ground to hear the girl and Brian rolling on each other. If Heather can’t sleep tonight, she can always take Suspicion for a walk, or even go and sit on her stoop—they’re her stairs just as much as they are anyone else’s, right? And then she will put her knees under her sweatshirt, move over to let the mourners pass. Or she’ll hunch herself to one side so Brian, if he can keep his pants up long enough, can get out the door. She will leave the door to her place open, in case the phone rings, in case someone needs something.

  Watermark

  Lucy’s father, Mark, water-skies off the Florida Keys. Her mother, Ginny, watches from the shore, sees him, her fiancé, wave to her. Really Ginny can’t see him, she can see only his swimsuit, bright as a cherry tomato, but she knows it when he waves. Farther out on the dock, H.C.—his name is Stanley but they call him Hard Cash, another story—starts singing Jerry Lee Lewis and miming piano. Ginny shouts, “That Jerry Lee was a crazy man!”

  They are years away from conceiving her, the daughter, Lucy, and thoughts of sex or labor, the engorged breasts of early parenting, are far out of reach, tucked away like a yellowing photograph.

  Trishelle sits next to Ginny, touches the taut red of her sunburned shoulders, her nose peeling, and nods. “Really, a thirteen-year-old bride. Oh, Jerry!” And then, back to the sunburn, “So much for mixing oil and Mercurochrome.” They sing about shaking, shimmying their upper bodies.

  Suddenly, H.C. calls out, “Oh, Jesus!” He runs to Lucy’s mother, who sings “Breathless—uh” as she and Trishelle spin each other around again and again until the beach slides into the water and it’s all a blur.

  H.C. screams, “Ginny, look out there!” as he points to the water.

  The boat pulls in circle after circle. Lucy’s father gives the slow-down sign, thumbs pointing to the ocean like an upside-down hitchhiker’s sign, but the boat still speeds. H.C. gets the megaphone as Ginny runs out to the dock end to tell Lucy’s father, but he’s already seen it racing along with him, a gray fin a yard away. He gives thumbs up, thumbs up, until the boat gears are pressed full.

  Trishelle and Ginny shout, “H.C.!” and “Shark!” waving their hands like cheerleaders in a Y, then an X formation.

  The fin is a foot away from the skis when Lucy’s father closes his eyes to salt water. When he opens them, the dorsal is against his shin, the rat-tail end of it high, just below his knee. H.C. yells, “Help’s coming—do something!”

  The boat’s drivers cut their circle fast, Lucy’s father crosses the wake, doubles back over to lose the fin, the dark shadow of body belonging to it darker and longer the closer into shore they move. Thinking Lucy’s father will glide out to them, the drivers cut the engine. One ski off, he meets the dock instead, crashes into wood and bolts, breaks his collarbone and three ribs.

  H.C., a summer lifeguard before his gambling days, lifts Lucy’s father out of the water and onto the shore end of the dock. Kneeling next to him, Ginny and Trishelle point to the fin, which has come farther out and onto the sea surface to reveal itself as a bottle-nosed dolphin.

  Its beaky snout tips toward the sky. The dolphin seems to call out to Lucy’s father as he is stretcher-lifted into an ambulance. Ginny, still barefooted, climbs in with him, unaware that one of her bikini straps has come undone. Lucy’s father, holding Ginny’s hand says, “Ginny, oh, Ginny,” over and over until he passes out. Trishelle and H.C., sun-oiled and sanded, follow in their car.

  Lucy’s father is left with a smooth, star-shaped scar on his collarbone. Nearing summer, it is time for Lucy to bring this story out again. She seems to see the happening so plainly in her memory, it is hard to believe she knows it only from being told. Her parents were her age then, the water locked into its flow, all of it bright. Unvowed, they hadn’t graduated from college, or conceived her, hadn’t felt their love slacken, the dialogue sucked right out of their car rides or Sunday evenings. Lucy is sure she has seen that moment on the beach; felt the fin, the sanded blood, the ambulance that goes off into whatever night, the blue of the lights—that siren—the slipping and rising of the watermark as if for always and always.

  In the Pink

  Manoir de Mode used to be the Chapin Museum of Natural History. Now, where the stuffed yaks, Eocene fossils, and tiny bugs preserved in amber were displayed, two-hundred-dollar jeans and infant-sized women’s waffle stretch shirts hang boneless from wire racks. Near the military-style coats, Lucy pauses to scratch the top of her foot and marvels at how easily the skin flakes off at summer’s end. Crouching between a thick-wooled, Russian-style, double-breasted number and a cashmere blend peacoat, Lucy can’t help but wonder which army members or military personnel might actually wear these coats—fancy sailors aboard the SS Bendel maybe. She’s about to say this to her mother, Ginny, who thumbs through the clothing as if it’s someone else’s laundry, but her mother beats her to speaking:

  “You could try one of these.” Ginny offers a maroon coat.

  “War Chic?” Lucy shakes her head.

  Ginny is about to respond but motions to a strollered baby, who is spitting white, cheesy drool and still managing a smile. To Ginny’s horror, and the hovering salesclerk’s disapproval, its mother uses her shirt cuff as a handkerchief. Lucy feels her own still flat belly, the splitting cells inside not yet showing exteriorly, and knows she will be the kind of mother who uses her clothing as a burp cloth, too. She realizes when she becomes a mother, her own mother will have a whole new territory by which to comment, judge, or admire her.

  Outside, Ginny looks at her mobile phone, checking for messages even though there’s been no ring, no buzz, then bends down to fix Lucy’s pants hem; the seam has flipped over, an unintentional cuff.

  “I’m hungry,” Lucy says, thinking maybe her mother will guess just from this that Lucy’s pregnant. She and Justin have waited out the first trimester, squirreling the secret between the two of them, not so much for the risk of miscarriage but for the swell of pride in knowing something so huge, so potentially public, that no one else can figure out.

  “I bumped into Jillian Levy—do you remember her from that ski trip? She’s a new member at the club, she’s redoing the tiles in the upstairs bath and needs my help deciding between glass and marble.” Ginny links her arm through Lucy’s, and they walk down Newbury Street past the high-end boutiques, Ginny’s newly blown out hair bobbing slightly with each step.

  “I like the ones you and Jim have in the guest bathroom,” Lucy says. She feels she must comment on the trivialities of Ginny’s days to give more weight to them. She acknowledges within herself a certain guilt about this, that she’s not having a real conversation, more just bucking informational tidbits; the tile showcase she read about in a British magazine, the wholesale fabric place, her opinion about Ginny’s shoes, whether her feet look too wide in ankle boots.

  “The ones in the guest bath are from Marseille.” Ginny nods as if she knew all along her daughter’s preference for French Country style.

  “Oh,” Lucy s
ays. “Did you bring them back?”

  Ginny stops to survey a window display at In the Pink, the store in which Ginny pronounces everything adorable and Lucy fights the urge to roll her eyes. In the window, the mantis-limbed mannequins stare vacantly back. “No—we shipped them. They’re too heavy, especially with Jim’s back. Even though he’s on the new medication. He might stop it, actually, based on the research.”

  Lucy swears she can feel a kick inside her. But it’s too early, right? She thinks back to the reading she did at the library, squatting between the book carousels to page through medical texts that depicted the embryo and fetus in every stage of development. How could it be that something, someone—a person who would make decisions, find or lose love, devour cinnamon or despise it, conquer or merely exist in the world—could be actually growing in Lucy and her own mother couldn’t know it without being told? Lucy is disappointed by the lack of karmic connection, the thought that somehow, underneath the bathroom tiles, the new club members, the stunning inaccuracy Ginny has in buying pieces for Lucy’s wardrobe (the fact that she would even call Lucy’s closet heap of old T-shirts and jeans a wardrobe), that Ginny isn’t magically connected enough to Lucy to just know.

  “Do you want to go inside?” Lucy asks and points to a rose-colored bag that rests on the tallest mannequin’s hip. “Is that the purse you were talking about before?”

  Ginny doesn’t move her eyes from the window. “That’s the one. It would be just right for Turn Back the Clock Night at the club.”

  “Why, what decade is it this year?” Lucy asks, thinking about the flapper costume, the fifties sock hop, the polyester disco days outfits her mother had worn in years past.

  Ginny turns to Lucy and sighs. “Oh, this year the committee couldn’t decide, so, it’s the fallback one, Peace and Love.” Wearily, she holds up two fingers in a peace sign.

  “Hippies, you mean?” Lucy grins. “I can really see you in a paisley print top and wraparound skirt.”

  Ginny nods. “What’s really odd, Luce, is that I did wear that.” She pauses and watches the fashionable folks walk past, their tiny heels clicking on the pavement. “It feels silly to think about dressing up in clothing I actually wore—like I’m repeating my life or something.”

  Lucy can’t think of what to do, so she puts her hands on her mother’s tweed-covered shoulders. Then the gesture seems too big, so she just touches her mother’s hands, pulling at the loose skin on the top, almost pinching her but not quite. “I think it’s neat—it’s like if I dressed in early eighties gear—it’s sad kind of, because I’d be dressing like a seventh-grader and I’m so much older…” Lucy looks at her own hands wrapped around her mother’s and then suddenly hugs her mother so tightly, clutches her so vehemently that Ginny allows her purse to slide off her shoulder, where it swings and bumps against them.

  “I love you so much, Mom,” Lucy says. She thinks she should say it more, wishes that between bathroom tiles and fierce proclamations there were other things to say, but then considers that maybe it’s enough as it is.

  “I love you, too, honey,” Ginny says, and Lucy can tell she’s already reeling in whatever emotions she had, already patting her back, most likely horrified by the display on Newbury Street.

  “Do you want to go get the bag?” Lucy thumbs to the mannequins.

  Ginny considers for a minute and then looks at Lucy straight on. “I had thought about it…” She raises her eyebrows at Lucy, and all the moments between them from babyhood to adolescence to Matt’s funeral to wedding dress shopping a second time come clomping back in a rush. “But I think we’d better get you something to eat. I’m guessing an Italian sub…”

  Ginny pauses, waiting for Lucy. “Yeah, something acidic, really tomatoey.”

  “I thought that might hit the spot,” Ginny says and, with the wink implied but not demonstrated, tells Lucy that she has known about her, all of her, all along.

  Talk

  Before his marriage, Lyle hadn’t known much about food. Kyla had given him chili paste in a tube one year in his stocking, and as the tree lights flinched behind him, she shook her head as Lyle asked what purpose flavored glue might serve.

  Two years in, Lyle could tell the difference between habanero peppers and cubanos, knew when Kyla had pan-fried zucchini blossoms by the sweet oil that coated the kitchen sink. Kyla was a wondrous chef despite not cooking with wheat and gluten, yet a perfunctory dishwasher, leaving slicks of garlic-infused olive oil on frying pans, melted and browned bits of pecorino on the cookie sheet they used to cook the hand-rolled dough, crumb armies in uneven lines rimming the sink.

  Lyle enjoyed plunging his hands in the hot dishwater, rummaging among the unseen utensils and plates, then picking an item to soap and rinse. Reed-tall, Lyle’s slim body seemed likely to bend at the waist and bow earthward as he stood barefooted over the murk and disposal-chewed dinner remains thinking about what he could possibly concoct for Kyla, who lay, nauseated and flushed, in her thirty-seventh week.

  Lyle knew not to touch Kyla’s back when she felt ill, so he stretched her legs out over his lap and rubbed at her knees. She turned her face away from the fan to look at him and then put her hands over his. Often this was her way of asking him to stop moving or scratching or tickling without asking outright, so he made his hands wide and flat and still.

  Kyla shook her head. “You don’t have to stop,” she said. “This time I was just putting my hands on yours.”

  They looked at each other a minute, and then Kyla motioned for Lyle to put his face near the belly-swell to feel the baby who swirled and flipped inside.

  “I’m thinking about later, you know, afterward,” Lyle said with his cheek against Kyla’s stomach skin.

  “Really?” She rubbed at the sparse hairs at the very top of his head. “I’m thinking about something crunchy—not carrots, popcorn maybe. With nuts. Peanut brittle.” She stood up. “That’s what I need.”

  “What will I do if I can’t think of all your funny stories to tell her?” Lyle said and made his arm into a crane, lowering it so the hand clasped Kyla’s shoulder and pulled her up by the shirt.

  At the Crescent Mill Mall near It’s All Twisted, the pretzel stand, a candy vendor handed Kyla a sand-colored slab of peanut brittle pocked with tiny air bubbles that had burst in the process of heating and cooling. Lyle watched his wife break a piece off to hand to him and was about to let himself wonder if this was the last time they’d have peanut brittle when Kyla said, “It’s not like we’ve had it before.”

  She knew where his mind went in the fluorescent lighting. “So you’d have to say, ‘The first and last time your mom and I had peanut brittle…’” She stopped talking to pick some gummed up candy out of a molar.

  The obstetrician, Gabrielle, had consulted with the neurosurgeon and reported in the hush of the beige office that the tumor was Stage 4. Lyle looked beyond the doctor at her framed family photos on the wall: toddlers—hers? steps?—in orange water-wings in the first lap of waves on a beach somewhere, grade school kids and a man—the husband? father?—dangling from the limbs of an umbrella pine, all in matching sweaters. Then Lyle thought maybe the pictures were there for that purpose, to distract patients from their diagnoses, so he stopped looking at them and turned to his wife.

  “I knew it would be,” Kyla was saying to the doctor about her tumor when Lyle rejoined the conversation. “Of course it’s the most aggressive kind, what else would I get?”

  Prepregnancy, Kyla had been an event planner in Santa Monica and was used to big news arriving suddenly. Either the catering truck would be stuck with a flat off Montana or some second-tier celebrity would increase the guest list by fifty a day before, or they’d realize the sterling silver whistles in the baby shower gift baskets were a choking hazard—regardless, Kyla accomplished whatever event she’d planned. This time, though, what she said to Gabrielle (and thought how L.A. it was to call her surgeon by her first name), maybe for Lyle’s benefit, was “I don’t t
hink I’m going to pull this one off.”

  Lyle let tears well up until they couldn’t be contained and the overflow dripped onto his cheeks, collected into widening disks on his light blue shirt. As if they were a by-product and therefore not his fault—rather like sweat during tennis—Lyle allowed the tears to keep coming without brushing them off as the doctor went over details of Kyla’s condition.

  “Since the tumor is in the parietal lobe, Kyla might lose the ability to write,” Gabrielle said with her hands clasped. “She could have speech disturbances. Seizures are common with tumors in this region of the brain, and talking can become very difficult.”

  Lyle thought about Kyla’s scrawling penmanship, the way the letters slanted forward as if they had somewhere better to be. Words curved into the right-hand margin until they blended into the next line. Lyle made Kyla laugh when he navigated directions she’d written, reading what the words looked like on the page: “Left nerp flanging stream, fish miles.”

  “You might experience a loss of recognition of your body parts—say, where your hands are in relation to your sides—spatial disorders are sometimes a problem after surgery.” The doctor paused. “I assume we’re going ahead with it?”

  Kyla looked at the ob’s face, her name plate with the sturdy block letters spelling “Gabrielle,” and tried to picture the doctor as a schoolgirl. Had she worn rainbow suspenders, or refused the crusts on her peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches? With an ephemeral blush, Kyla wondered if Gabrielle had been one of the mean girls, the rumor spreaders, the ones who shrugged off the girls who still played with plastic horses at playground time, the way she had. Once, Kyla had admitted to Lyle how cruel she’d been in seventh grade, writing fake love notes and starting the Let’s Hate Jennifer B. Club after Jenny B. received too much sympathy for her emergency appendectomy. Then later, how the meanness crept back, how she’d slept with her roommate’s boyfriend in graduate school, not because she needed to but because she could. Lyle had suppressed a laugh, unable to comprehend that his now empathetic, vanilla-scented wife had been hipless in seventh grade and the class bitch, and heartless in her early twenties, whereas now she had to have Lyle be the one to complain that the cleaners weren’t drying the laundry well enough, and mildew was starting to appear on the hems of her shirts.