Juno's Daughters

by Lise Saffran

  What she didn’t tell Mary Ann was that Trinculo, at rehearsal the day before, had asked Jenny if she was going. Jenny took a sip of wine and let it trickle down her throat. She could imagine the kinds of women that Trinculo was surrounded by in the city. Gorgeous, stylish, professional women. Young women. And still, he had asked her if she was going to Seattle.

  “Nah. I go to Seattle all the time,” she’d lied. The truth was, she hardly ever went. The deeper truth was that she was afraid. The bustle, the noise, the homeless, and the strangers all made her feel lost and anxious.

  “She’s a good egg,” said Mary Ann, about Lilly. “She’ll be okay.” Mary Ann waved to Kelly, who’d hopped from her job at the craft store to the new bar just as soon as it opened. No tips on felt pieces, she’d pointed out.

  “Hi, girls.” Kelly was wearing a tight white T-shirt and a jeans skirt on which she had appliquéd a variety of multicolored birds. “What can I getja?”

  Mary Ann pushed her glasses down on her nose and peered at the menu. “Veggie tempura?” She looked at Jenny. “That sound good?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “And the cheese plate,” added Mary Ann.

  Mary Ann had recently begun taking pills for her blood pressure, and it occurred to Jenny to say something about her friend’s heart, but she decided against it.

  “My sister has invited Lilly to come live with them and attend college in Marin.”

  Mary Ann popped her glasses back up on her face so she could see Jenny clearly. “That’s wonderful, Jen. I hadn’t realized that Lilly wanted to go to college.”

  Jenny sighed. “I’m not sure that Marin County will be such a good place for her.”

  Mary Ann pretended to find a spot on the table that needed burnishing with her napkin. “But you can’t say the same thing about school, can you? Surely that would be a good thing?”

  Jenny didn’t answer. She gazed out the window at a couple strolling by, hand in hand. They were about her parents’ age, she thought. Mid-sixties. They looked happy and well-fed and confident in each other’s presence. The wish to have someone with whom she could discuss these matters of her children—not Mary Ann, but a real partner—pierced her so sharply that she winced.

  Mary Ann caught the gesture, and her features softened with sympathy. Her husband had died within six months of being diagnosed with bone cancer. It had been more than ten years since then.

  “It’s weird having Frankie gone,” said Jenny, after a long silence. “I think this is only, like, the second time she’s been away from me since she was born.”

  “That angel.” At the mention of Jenny’s younger daughter, Mary Ann patted the palm of her hand against the top of her blouse, over her heart.

  Someone yelled “good shot” from the back of the room, and a couple people sitting at tables around the women swiveled in their chairs to look. Jenny stood up and peered into the back of the bar in time to see Jamie chasing a little white ball through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

  When Jenny turned back around she was just in time to see Dale striding through the front door. His face lit up with delight upon seeing Jenny and Mary Ann.

  “If it isn’t the two loveliest women on the island,” he said. He kissed them both on the cheek, but the kiss he gave Jenny lingered a bit longer and was slightly closer to her mouth. “Which is a statement I make with impunity only because my own dear bride is on another northern isle.” He pulled a chair back from the table and plopped into it. He looked like a sea captain in his windbreaker and battered deck shoes. He crossed his legs at the thigh. “She has left me alone, alas.” His face contorted into a comic mask of grief.

  “How’s her mom?” asked Mary Ann.

  Dale’s expression reverted back into its normal wry contours. “The old gal will live forever. I promise you.” He leaned forward and lifted the wine bottle at an angle so he could assess its contents. “I see you’ve gotten a head start on me.” He tilted the last sips of wine directly into his mouth from the bottle. “Looks like it’s time for another.”

  Dale carried the empty bottle to the bar and returned a few moments later with a full one and a dish of nuts commandeered from another table. “These are good,” he said, tossing a few pecans into his mouth. “So … how do you think it’s all going so far?”

  Jenny smiled. “I’m having the time of my life.”

  Dale looked into her eyes and beamed.

  “It’s going to be great,” said Mary Ann, “though I think the part where Caliban appears is a bit dark, still. We should consider another flashlight.”

  Dale waved her comment away with his hand. “Oh, you’ll have to talk to Peg about that,” he said. He turned back to Jenny. “What do you think of Miranda? She’s a beauty, isn’t she? And Trinculo?” He rolled a swig of wine around in his mouth before swallowing. “Trinculo is what we used to call a fox. If I were a man of certain proclivities… .”

  Mary Ann snorted. “I’ve never known you to be someone who limited his proclivities in any way,” she said.

  Dale burst out laughing. “Well said.”

  By the time they finished the next bottle, the ping-pong in the back had given way to music. Dale had pulled both Jenny and Mary Ann into a dance in turn. The band was playing Turn on Your Love Light and Jenny was being dipped dangerously low when the cell phone in her pocket started to vibrate. It might have been the wine, or maybe it was the swinging, but as soon as she felt the phone go off she was gripped with a sudden wave of nausea and panic. The music and voices and faces were blocked out with images of car crashes on Highway 1, the road to Mount Vernon. One word entered her mind. A plea. A prayer. An appeal to whatever gods might be listening. Frankie, she thought. Please let it not be Frankie.

  It was Lilly. “Hi, Mom. Hey, where are you? What’s all that noise?”

  “I’m in a bar, Lil. The new one. With Mary Ann.”

  Dale held his hands palm upward to protest his abandonment on the dance floor. Jenny grimaced, holding a finger in her ear, as she headed for the table.

  “Is Mary Ann the only person there?” asked Lilly. “From the play?”

  “Well, Dale’s here, too. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just wondering.”

  Lilly rarely asked what Jenny was up to, much less called her to keep tabs, so that wondering set Jenny wondering, too. She tried to remember what Lilly had said she was going to do after work. She had been typically vague.

  “Do you need something?” asked Jenny now, making her way back to the table.

  “Nah.” Lilly did not hang up immediately. “Trinculo isn’t there by any chance, is he?”

  “He went to Seattle.” Jenny leaned against the doorway. How many glasses of wine had she had? She had lost count.

  “Mmm. Miranda did and Caliban did. But Ariel and Trinculo decided not to go.” Lilly paused. Faint music played in the background. The radio in Elliot’s truck. “Or at least I think they did.”

  At least she thought they did. Ah-hah. So that was it. Jenny raised her eyes to the ceiling, where a fan spun lazily. She would have to be quite a bit more soused than she was not to recognize what she had failed to grasp earlier: Lilly’s staying behind was most assuredly not a sign of restraint and responsibility. Quite the opposite. She was scheming on Trinculo.

  “Look, Lil.” Her voice was clipped. “I’m going to hang up now. I can’t hear a thing in here.”

  “Okay, okay. Sorry to bother you.”

  “You’re not bothering me,” said an exasperated Jenny into a phone that was already dead.

  “Not bothered?” Dale had come up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. His breath smelled flammable. “Well, that’s too bad.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward the music. Jenny did not want to think anymore, and she let herself be pulled. She dropped her phone back into the pocket of her cotton skirt and tried to keep her balance in the face of Dale’s exuberant lead. Mary Ann was dancing with Ellen from the booksto
re and David, who’d shown up without Jenny noticing, was jamming with the band on his harmonica. There were several couples Jenny had never seen on the floor now, clearly reveling in their vacation from office cubicles and endless e-mails. When he swung her around this time, Dale had to pull her close. The turn ended and he kept holding her there, clutched against his damp chest. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was a little awkward, particularly with David eyeing them over his harmonica. She tugged herself loose. Dale suddenly pressed his cheek against hers and said abruptly into her ear, “Peg wants an open marriage. She says she’s feeling trapped.”

  Jenny pulled her head back to look him in the face. Had he really just said what she thought she heard? Dale spun under her hand and did not look her in the eye. The song picked up tempo, merging without interruption from “Turn on Your Love Light” into “Hard to Handle.” Dale dropped her hands and shook himself as if he were trying to elude a stinging insect that had flown into an opening in his clothes. David’s harmonica whined in her ear. Jenny let her body slow like a top winding down. Sweating and bouncing and spinning, no one around her appeared to notice.

  Peg wanted an open marriage? She pictured Peg in her sweatpants and batik top, chewing on the end of her pencil. Looking sharply at Dale, she was suddenly suspicious that he was misrepresenting the situation by a cool one hundred percent. He gave Jenny a mischievous smile, which practically confirmed it. Of the two of them, he seemed the more likely to want an open marriage, in spite of what had happened with Puck that first summer and, well, okay, there was also Jacques from As You Like It. Still, that was more than three years ago. Dale flirted outrageously all the time. Jenny put her hand to her mouth, remembering how he’d kissed her on Shaw the summer before. Stepping forward, Dale lifted her hand and pulled her close again, then dipped her.

  “You can’t just …” she started to say, once she was back to the vertical, but the words died in her mouth.

  Ariel and Trinculo stood in the doorway scanning the room for familiar faces. Ariel was wearing yoga pants and a tank top that was thin and tight enough to show exactly how little fat there was on his lithe body, how much unexpected muscle. His hair was covered in a purple bandanna. Trinculo was wearing black jeans, boots, and a leather jacket. He looked like he was ready for a night on a town considerably bigger than Friday Harbor, San Juan.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” Jenny slipped from Dale’s grasp and wove through the crowd toward the dim, narrow hallway in the back.

  She tried the door with the androgynous stick figure and found it mercifully unlocked. Luckily, she did not wear any makeup and could splash her face with cold water without messing anything up. But maybe she should wear makeup? She stared at her dripping red-cheeked face in the mirror. She was drunk. This was ridiculous. She wanted to cry. She laughed out loud. What was Trinculo thinking in his black leather and boots? She looked down at her home-dyed cotton skirt, with pockets no less, and at her well-worn Tevas. The only boots she owned were made by Redwing and they had soles caked with mud. She wished she knew what was in his mind. He had said more than once he wasn’t interested in Lilly, he had been attentive and polite and always sidled up to her after rehearsal, and yet … he had never kissed Jenny.

  Someone banged on the door. “Hello?”

  “Coming.”

  Jenny tucked her hair behind her ears and dried her hands. She smiled at the woman in the hallway, an impatient-looking tourist in a killer whale T-shirt, and stepped back into the light and sound of the bar. The band was taking a break and, as she made her way back to the table, she saw Dale and Mary Ann laughing at something Ariel had said. Trinculo was talking to the waitress and gesturing at the menu. The curator from the sculpture park, along with her husband who was, like Lilly, a landscaper, had joined them and there were two empty chairs at the table. One, she assumed, was for David, who would be smoking on the patio. The other was for her.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Ariel sweetly, as Jenny sat down.

  Trinculo’s eyes flicked to her from the menu and he finished his order.

  “Hardly,” said Jenny, giving Ariel a whack on the shoulder. “I thought you were in the big city this weekend.”

  “Seattle is not the big city.”

  Trinculo patted Ariel’s hand. “Ariel here decided to stay and keep me company.”

  “Seattle is a bore.” Ariel yawned elaborately and allowed his leg to fall casually against Trinculo’s. “And I decided not to go first, by the way. Trink here is keeping me company.”

  “Whatever,” said Trinculo.

  “You would have had fun,” said Mary Ann. “There’s a big farmers’ market on the weekend in Pioneer Square.”

  “The tacos at Aqua Verde are worth the trip alone,” said Dale, returning with a couple of extra wineglasses.

  Ariel glanced around the table and Jenny could have sworn that his gaze lingered extra-long on her. “Our friend Trink isn’t interested in having fun. He thinks he’s going to burn in hell.”

  Trinculo laughed and reached for a glass. “I don’t think I’m going to burn in hell, sweetheart. I know it.” He drank and set the glass down again, and without meeting her eyes, he let his hand trail briefly along Jenny’s elbow.

  She started and then glanced around to see if anyone had noticed him do that. All Trinculo had to do was brush against her and her skin rose up to meet his touch like yeast dough in a bowl.

  “So are we all,” said Dale, draining his glass. “In the meantime, what if we take this bunch of mainlanders over to Roche Harbor for the colors ceremony?”

  “Oh, no. Not really!” Mary Ann laughed. “It’s so corny.”

  “It’s perfect. Everyone loves it when they come.”

  “The first five times, perhaps,” said Jenny.

  “I’m game,” said Trinculo. “Do you dance around a fire and roast mainlanders on a spit?”

  Mary Ann shook her head. “It’s the lowering of the flag at Roche Harbor, is all. With a little pomp and circumstance.”

  “Sounds charming,” drawled Ariel.

  “I’ll drive then,” said Mary Ann.

  “Jenny and I will ride with you,” said Dale. “I get to sit next to Jenny.”

  “You can sit in the back,” said Mary Ann, with a stern look. She glanced at Trinculo. “Do you want to follow us?”

  “Sure.” He drained his glass and stood up.

  They arrived at Roche Harbor as the sun was lowering itself toward the water. Tourists, boaters, diners, and strollers were all assembling on the dock and the hillside. The crowd shifted and suddenly there was Lilly running up the hill to meet them, her dreads bouncing against her back, her bright smile and slightly overlapping front teeth on full and glorious display. The sight of her stopped Jenny in her tracks. Sometimes it took her glimpsing her older daughter from a distance to see how grown and beautiful and ready she was. Keeping Lilly on the island would be like trying to hold back the tide, Jenny realized. This was Lilly’s moment, and before the night was through she knew she would give her permission to go to California. She would give her blessing. In her mind she could already hear her daughter’s yelp of delight and feel her arms, stronger and browner but not so very different than when she was a little girl, flung around her neck.

  Still, how had she known to meet them there, wondered Jenny. She cast glances at Ariel and Trinculo, who were unfolding themselves from the Mini Cooper that they had borrowed for the summer. Had Trinculo called her? In any case, there she was, coming toward them. Jenny spied Elliot at the bottom of the hill standing shyly with his hands in his pockets, and she waved. He waved back. In minutes, they had all joined up into one boisterous group and were headed down the hill together.

  The islanders knew what came next. There would be the lowering of the flag, the playing of national anthems from the boats in the harbor, and the hilarious finale, in which color guards and honored guests jumped from the pier into the water. Meanwhile, the harbor master would be reminding the swimmers
of incoming tide drifts and pointing out the fact that Canadian boats seldom had holding tanks for their waste, so keep your mouth closed in the water.

  They passed Our Lady of Good Voyage Chapel and continued down toward the glittering bay. The sun set. The flag fell like a fainting woman into the arms of the color guard. The color guard jumped. Ariel jumped. Lilly and Jenny were pushed. Trinculo leaped after, and in just a few moments they were all treading salt water among the anchored boats.

  CHAPTER 8

  An Unexpected Visitor

  Jenny, Lilly, Frankie, and Phoenix rode their bikes to American Camp and back for a picnic. They arrived at Jenny’s turn-off sweating and red-faced. Their legs, after working the pedals hard, were slick and itchy. Each passing car—and there were relatively many of them at this time of the year—had left a cloud of exhaust that lingered in the air just long enough for them to ride through it single file.

  They dropped their bikes onto the yellow grass and looked up to see Ariel sitting comfortably on the front step, reading a novel in a patch of shade by the flowerpot. A plastic shopping bag was tucked up next to him. He was wearing a tank top, shorts made out of some extremely high-tech-looking material, and gladiator sandals that Jenny immediately coveted. He smiled pleasantly and waited until they were close enough so that he did not have to raise his voice to speak.

  “Ladies.”

  Frankie was less cool by a mile. “Ariel!” She ran forward and plopped down next to him.

  Phoenix approached warily, her face displaying equal parts of curiosity and envy. The truce, Jenny suspected, was now officially over.

  Jenny stepped forward. “Would you like a glass of iced tea? We’ve got some chamomile in the fridge.”

  “That would be lovely.” Ariel lifted himself from the step and fanned at his face with his book. “It’s scorching.”