Then: Future Plans
They were sitting on the grass at Hillside Park, a nondescript copse of trees in the middle of Philadelphia. They could hear the cars, a bright burst of laughter from half a block away. Jack had a joint pinched between his fingers and inhaled deeply before passing it to Penelope. Penelope passed it straight to Willa, who smoked it in silence, sunk into herself and moody.
“So listen, I have this cousin,” Jack said. “He lives in a place in Deer Run. He just bought this old church that was converted into a house, but barely, you know? Like it might need some work. But he got some crazy-ass fellowship in Spain, so he’s leaving. He asked me if I’d live there.”
“Where the fuck is Deer Run?” Willa asked, her voice raspy and tight from the weed. Willa had been born and raised mostly in Louisiana, moving north to the Main Line when she was in high school. When she was high, or emotional, her twang thickened.
“I don’t know. Like an hour away, I think? In the country somewhere. I grew up in Brooklyn; I know nothing.”
Graduation was coming at them like a thundering herd. Penelope felt numb to all of it—she was much too tired. If she were Willa, she would have said so fucking tired, but instead she closed her eyes and wished for a night without studying or working on her final projects. Exams were next week. And that was it—her whole undergraduate education was ending.
It was strange to think that five years ago she didn’t know these people, and now her entire identity was wrapped up in everything about them. Their lives so entwined it was hard to tell where one started and the other began. They spoke in code; just a single word, like watermelon, could send them into fits of giggles, leaving anyone else in their orbit confused and shrugging. Rolling their eyes. Penelope had never known anything like it.
Her freshman year, Penelope had sprung for an on-campus apartment. A single. An extravagance, really. Reserved for the richest kids with the biggest trust funds. And yet, she took her parents’ inheritance and spent it that quickly. She was accustomed to being alone at the time—the idea of sharing a space squeezed at her lungs. The room next to her blared music at all hours of the day and night, until finally Penelope marched down the hall, banged on the door, and Willa answered, wearing only a towel, wax strips stuck to her leg, smoking a cigarette. You aren’t supposed to smoke in here, Penelope said idiotically. She cringed at the memory.
Willa—blonde, smoking, drinking, brash—was whip smart and calculating. Penelope—quiet, pretty in a Laura Ingalls–way, not as smart as Willa but studied much harder. The first thing Willa said to her was, “Thank God, can you pull this off?”—holding her muscular calf out, her toes painted red and gleaming. They shouldn’t have become friends as quickly as they did.
A few months later, Willa showed up at Penelope’s door with Jack. I found us a third, presenting him arms outstretched like Vanna White. Penelope hadn’t known they were looking for a third, but they clicked so easily into place she often couldn’t remember the time before.
By sophomore year, they were planning their classes to end around the same time and later would congregate at Willa’s spacious off-campus apartment to watch General Hospital, which would lead to endless analysis about the love triangle of Sonny, Jason, Carly. Sometimes Bree and Flynn would show up, tagging along behind Jack.
There were times, like now, when Penelope felt utterly invisible. Watching Willa and Jack’s verbal sparring, their sharp exchanges that when written down would have looked harsh, like fights. Penelope loved them, not just the jabs, but the role she played—their watcher. The one who laughed at them, cut them off when it got too sharp. She loved that she had a group, and a role in it.
Jack got high or drunk and mostly avoided talking about what was next. Just that he had to, at some point, go home to his father (Shithead, he called him), their hardware store in Brooklyn, and decide what life he was going to choose for himself. Manhattan, some finance position on Wall Street, most likely. Penelope could see him working a room, shaking hands, giving that big toothy smile to every woman in the boardroom, the bar, the bedroom. He was Jack; the kinks would work themselves out. The other seniors all seemed to have plans—Anne Hemsley from her Business Simulation group had a position at a start-up called Greenchain waiting for her, and it was all she ever talked about. Blockchain technology, VC funding propositions, Greenchain partnership strategies. Yes, they had their group project to put finishing touches on, but Penelope started declining her calls and listening to her frantic voice mails later. Penelope! Do you understand we only have two weeks left? Where are you! The incoming texts were mostly in capital letters.
The other thing was, everyone had a home to go to. Penelope, orphaned at nine, was raised by her mother’s sister, Belinda, who lived alone in a little blue saltbox in Elkins Park. A solitary woman, living on her sister’s hefty life insurance left to her after the accident to raise a girl she’d barely known. The house bordered an alley, the curtains were kept drawn most of the time, and the only light at night came from the oversize television alternating between network news and the Home Shopping Network.
“So what, you want us to just move there, and we will be college two-point-oh?” Willa snorted. “So typical. You’re Peter Pan, as usual.”
“Oh, fuck off. I mean, doesn’t it sound like fun? At least a little bit?”
“Tell me about the house.” Penelope finally spoke, and Willa gave her a sharp look—You aren’t considering this madness, are you? Jack snatched the joint out of Willa’s still fingers to take the last drag, and she kicked at him with her bare toe.
“I don’t know anything about it. Just that it used to be a church. Freaky, right? We could have séances there or some shit.”
“That’s satanic.” Willa stretched, her back arched, and Jack reached over, slapped at her breast, and she screamed, swatted at him. In the sunlight, you could see Willa’s long red scar under her makeup. Penelope hardly ever noticed it. She’d been in a near-fatal car accident as a child, and now, the everlasting remnant: a thick, knotted rope of flesh from her left temple to her jawline.
“That’s not what Satanism is,” Penelope interjected and felt Willa’s eyes roll; she didn’t even have to see her.
“You’re the most goddamn pedantic person.”
“We could all live together. Just one more year. In the country. Get jobs at like a coffee shop. Something lame. Like a gap year, like those European kids take.” Jack was pushing harder; Penelope knew him. Watched him through slitted eyes, pretending to be sleepy. He wanted this. He didn’t want to go home to his dad. He wanted college two-point-oh. He wanted them to stay together. Suddenly, fervently, Penelope wanted it too. More than she’d ever wanted anything.
“What’s the rent?” Penelope asked, lacing her fingers behind her head. Jack gave her a smile, big, brilliant.
“Cheap. Like a grand a month? We just have to cover Parker’s mortgage. It has five bedrooms. If we could find two more people, it’s almost free.”
“Bree,” Willa said immediately. “And Flynn.”
“You want me to live with Bree?” Jack closed his eyes, laughed, and fell backward on the grass in a faint, legs spread eagle. Bree. Six feet tall, skin white and chilly, long deep-red waves down her back. Her high, floaty voice, never grounded in real life. Bright-blue eyes, narrowed and all-knowing. All-disapproving? Some thought so. Bree made Penelope mildly uncomfortable, like her own skin was the wrong size, and when Bree was around, Penelope never knew what to do with her hands.
Jack had always been a little in love with her. It was her inaccessibility. She was a virgin; she stated it plainly and proudly and seemed uninterested in changing that status. Maybe it was the way her face closed off and no one could read it. You had to rely on her words alone. Maybe it was the way she barely looked at him, wasn’t impressed by him. He was just so unaccustomed to it. He always did a little song and dance for Bree, and he thought no one saw it. Penelope did, and maybe she should have been jealous, angry at his postu
ring. She never was—probably because it was never returned, not even a little bit.
“Oh, God. Can you imagine? You’ll just moon after her all day.” Willa giggled helplessly, falling back against Jack’s chest. Penelope wondered, briefly, fleetingly, how it would feel to casually touch him, when she spent so much time avoiding it. To have it be that easy, the warmth and steady thrum of his heartbeat directly under her ear.
“I don’t moon,” Jack grumbled but grinned bashfully.
“I don’t think you have to worry about Bree either way.” Penelope felt the flush creep up her neck and stood, brushing invisible grass off her bare thighs and khaki shorts. She looked away, down the street, shielding her eyes, even though the sun was behind her. “She doesn’t give you the time of day.”
“God, you’re such a wench.” Jack had his arm slung over his eyes. “I feel like you like to hurt me.”
“You just say that because I won’t sleep with you,” Penelope shot back, turning her head only slightly, and tugged her hair into a messy knot at the base of her neck. She started packing up the remains of their picnic, the wedge cheese soft and slick with condensation, the mushy grapes, the empty wine bottle. When she turned back, Willa’s eyes were closed, her face relaxed in a doze.
Jack’s hand reached out, grazed her ankle, his thumb fitting neatly into the lumpy curve of bone at the base of her calf, and Penelope swallowed thickly. His pressure increased until she could feel the pulse there, jumping under her skin.
He smiled as he whispered, “Won’t you, now?”
CHAPTER FOUR
February 12, 2020
Brett found them on the back patio, wrapped in blankets, sipping a merlot that Penelope had unearthed from behind boxed macaroni and cheese in the pantry. He stood uncertainly in the doorway, the sliding glass door open enough for his thin frame, sweaty and pinked from a hot yoga session. They’d been laughing, but their amusement died off with the slide of the door. Like they’d been caught.
Penelope studied her husband, tried to see him through Willa’s eyes: the squared jaw, the too-long honey hair, the ruddy cheeks. The newly formed dullness behind brown eyes that he covered up with an open, friendly smile. Brett always looked like a Boy Scout to her: innocent and wholesome. She’d spent much of her marriage loving that about him. Of course, she’d been under the impression that growing up was a given, that it would happen organically. That she wouldn’t find herself, at forty-two, nudging him along into adulthood the way you cajole a child into a kindergarten classroom.
His eyes flicked to Penelope’s: I didn’t know we had company. Why do you always surprise me? Or maybe she just imagined it. She tried to send a message back, telepathically. I didn’t know.
“Brett, this is Willa. My roommate in college.” Technically not the truth. Roommate after college.
Brett crossed the patio in three easy steps, his hand extended. Willa stood, and they shook hands. Penelope reversed her gaze, tried to see her old friend through her husband’s eyes and found she couldn’t do it. He smiled wide, but Penelope knew it wasn’t real. He’d always been good, though.
“How was yoga?” Penelope asked him, her voice careful. Would Willa wonder why her husband had been to yoga in the middle of the day? Why he wasn’t wearing a suit, preoccupied by his phone, maybe carrying a briefcase? Why did it even matter?
“All good,” he said blandly, then turned toward their guest. “Staying for dinner, Willa?”
Willa glanced at Penelope, then back to Brett, picking up on the tension. Penelope nodded, smiled brightly, and said, “If that’s all right, darling?”
Penelope had never called Brett darling before in her life. Sometimes babe. Once, as a joke at a holiday party, she called him sweetie. They were mocking someone else, but Penelope couldn’t remember who; she only remembered the gentle, insistent pressure of his knee against hers under the table, his lips pressed together to hold in the laughter.
“I’ll run up to shower and join you then,” Brett offered amiably before shutting the door, but Penelope could tell he was thrown. He’d gotten set in his day. Yoga, shower, dinner, one glass of wine, bed. A dinner guest had not been penciled in on the wall calendar that hung next to the refrigerator. Penelope held up her index finger in Willa’s direction, set her wineglass on the wooden table between them. It was warm for February, almost fifty. But by five o’clock, the sun was low in the sky. Willa’s cheeks were red, her lips mottled purple.
Penelope followed Brett inside, expecting him to still be in the kitchen, but he must have booked it. She took the steps two at a time and found him in their bathroom, shirtless in his underwear, the shower running.
“I didn’t know she was coming, okay?”
“Okay.” Brett could be irritatingly agreeable, but Penelope never had any idea if he was truly fine or if he was irritated fine or angry fine. Lately she was just guessing. She remembered being sure—that easy confidence that came when you were together, in tune. She remembered a time when she’d know just by the set of Brett’s shoulders whether his day had been good or bad. When she’d think, No, not chicken tonight, we had chicken last night because Brett liked to mix up his dinners, and she didn’t mind doing things that Brett liked.
“Okay, like really okay?”
“It’s just dinner, Pen.” He didn’t look at her, his hand waving under the spray, testing the temperature. He shed his underwear, his ass white as he turned away from her, and stepped into the glass enclosure. His thighs were newly muscular, cut from all the yoga and weightlifting. Some men bought cars; some carried on with women twenty years their junior. Brett got laid off and took up yoga. And Reiki. And bought a cross-fit membership. And a monthly credit card bill for something called a sound bath. He was spending their money on wellness as fast as she could make it.
“Actually, she wants to stay for a few days.” Penelope rushed on, “I think she’s in trouble, but I don’t know what yet. She seemed so scared when she came to the door.”
“Is this Willa from the fire house?”
The fire house. How casually he threw it out there. Penelope swallowed. Penelope and Willa hadn’t even touched on the subject of the house. It didn’t feel like they were avoiding the topic, but Penelope was positive they both worked hard to make the avoidance seem effortless.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you kept in touch with her.” His voice took on an edge. “With any of them.”
“I haven’t. Not really. I don’t think . . .” Penelope inhaled, the steam filling her lungs. She sounded defensive, felt defensive, but without reason. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t told him about the letter, from the summer. “I don’t think she had anywhere else to go.”
“Okay,” Brett said after a pause.
“Okay okay? Or okay-you-want-to-kill-me-but-I’m-your-wife okay?”
He didn’t answer right away, instead choosing to scrub at his scalp, suds spattering against the glass, biceps flexing with the effort. Everything about Brett’s body was new; he was hardly recognizable as the man she’d married. Wait, was he . . . tanning? She squinted at a faint line across the pale of his thighs.
“I just don’t know that I’m up for all this, that’s all,” he said finally. “But I feel like that doesn’t matter. You just do your Penelope thing, and I’ll go along.”
“That’s unfair. I didn’t invite her. A friend showed up and asked for help. We can help. We have the space.” Penelope flung her arms wide, as if to show him, Look how lucky we are. “She just needs a few days, she says.”
She paused, studied her own reflection in the mirror: her hair dark and glossy, her makeup a little worn but still intact, her lips stained red with wine. They were lucky. One look at Willa’s neck, the faint blue dots, the pinched lines around her mouth and eyes told her that. She could open her door for an old friend, right? They didn’t have to talk about the past—she was sure they’d both happily pretend for the week. Besides, Penelope hadn’t had a real girlfriend
in a long time. Wine on the freezing-cold patio felt nicer than she’d ever admit.
Finally, she said, “Brett?” and he sighed.
“Yeah, okay.”
Later, she straddled him in bed. He’d gotten shockingly, gleefully buzzed on vodka sodas. Willa brought a celebratory air to their dinner—a giddiness that hadn’t existed before—even if the reasons she’d come weren’t inherently joyful. There was something about the performance that was fun. They exchanged stories about traveling and vacations, wine, and discovered that both Willa and Brett played squash regularly. At one point, Willa picked up Penelope’s phone on the side table and took a selfie of the three of them, faces pinked by the February evening wind.
Linc stayed for dinner at Zeke’s, a kid he’d known since third grade. Tara texted at some point during the evening: be home around ten, going to dinner with everyone. On any other day, Penelope might have texted back, who’s everyone? But that night, she simply said, have fun. Tara wrote back immediately, really? Where’s my mom? And Penelope didn’t even reply.
She’d worked hard, these past twenty years, to forget everything she had loved about all of them. She couldn’t afford to miss them—it was simply too much of a risk. What might she have done in a moment of weakness? Reached out, extended an olive branch? And then what? Doors that were opened could often never be shut again. But here she was anyway, flinging open a door. Why?
Penelope had forgotten that Willa was so funny. Or maybe not forgotten, but she hadn’t expected it. Even despite whatever circumstances she’d arrived under, she was quick witted. They fell back into clever sparring, and now, Willa roped in Brett. Teasing him about aligning energies.
“Look, it sounds nuts, I know.” He’d laughed as he said it, his drink more vodka than soda, thin peels of lime accumulating at the bottom of the glass. Penelope looked up in surprise. He’d never, not once in the past year, admitted to his new diversions sounding “nuts.” He never treated them with a tongue in cheek. Never hinted that it was comical that a man who until very recently was a senior vice president of finance at a major—now bankrupt—insurance group, who until lately found personal fulfillment in budgeting, databases, spreadsheets, numeric predictions of how their life was progressing (on or off track), now relied on things like “universal energies” and “life force” as a source of anything other than the butt of a joke. He’d traded in his dark suits for linen pants, the pockets of which routinely contained colorful, flat palm stones—deep reds and purples, blues and oranges—the size of a silver dollar that she’d have to fish out before she accidentally ran them through the laundry.
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